克里斯托弗·威廉姆斯在《形式起源》一书中指出，世间万物的形式，不管是人造物还是自然物，小至细胞的结构，大至山川、海岸的形状，及至动物和植物的生长逻辑，无不是地球重力和各种自然应力共同作用的结果。威廉姆斯进而又指出，与结构相关的自然应力共有五种，分别是压力、张力、扭转、剪力和弯曲。"结构是在最适合预期用途的形式内以最佳方式配置元素，使用最适于承受预期应力的材料，以最少材料达成最大强度的方法"。①
　　除去这些自然力之外，人作为社会性动物，社会性的群体组织方式，社会性的知识累积方式，以及社会性的情感表达方式，也都是潜在地影响到人类对于周遭世界的一种空间结构认识方式，进而影响到人类对于世间万物的形式表达方式。这种社会性的对于形式结构的影响力，我们姑且称之为"社会力"。
　　具体而言，社会力的形成，以及产生作用的方式，可以分为三个层面：
　　其一，社会性群体意志。它主要体现的是社会制度、占统治地位的主流意识形态、社会组织形态、社会习俗及文化，以及主导型的社会情绪表达方式。它的表达方式也大致是通过政权，国家机器，主流文化传统、习俗，以及社会组织等方式，将这种群体意志转化为外力的表现形式。
　　其二，个体意志。人不同于动物的一个主要特征即在于，人类可以通过个体的学习过程，掌握群体此前累积的知识和经验。这种学习的途径可以通过语言传授、技能传授、专门的培训机构教育、书籍等方式来实现。所以人类在成长的经验中，要经历一个漫长的个人知识学习和累积的过程。某些动物种群，特别是灵长类动物种群，也有类似的"学习"过程，但是，与这些简单的生存技能所不同的是，人类在学习过程中，还会逐步建立起自己的知识结构和价值判断，并进而会通过个体的价值判断影响和改变了社会形式。同时，这种个体的知识累积过程中也充分体现了社会性的特征。故而，即便是人类的个体意志的体现，也是充分反映了人的社会本质属性。
　　其三，集体无意识。荣格认为，集体无意识是由遗传保留的无数同类型经验在心理最深层积淀的人类普遍性精神。这种通过遗传的方式所实现的同类型经验累积的方式，或许是人类在进化过程中所残留的动物特征之一。动物的生存本能和生存经验，大部分是通过遗传的方式在个体之间实现传递的。某些典型的社会性动物种群，比如蚂蚁和蜜蜂等，个体的意识程度非常低级，而群体性的社会分工和协调则是通过分泌"体外激素"费洛蒙的方式来进行的。个体之间只遗传发出和接收费洛蒙指令信息的能力，更高一级的社会性"智慧"只存在于群体的"超级大脑"之中。而人类的集体无意识则不同，虽然也是通过生物遗传的方式来实现传递和累积，但是人类的集体无意识显然也是更具有明显的社会性特征。首先，人类的集体无意识中包含本能和原型，而原型的产生则是和种群的早期社会性经验有关。比方说人类早期的洞穴生活经验，决定了后来人类主动设计的房屋的形式和功能。其次，集体无意识在某种条件下可以被激活，进而变成显意识。
　　综上所述，社会力作用于形式的方式，可以归纳为集体意志、个体意志，以及集体无意识三个层面。
　　今天我们所面临的社会特征即是以房地产经济为纽带，集合了国家意志、权力关系、资本、个人意志以及集体无意识的一场博弈、纠缠、矛盾、对抗以及再平衡的关系。这其中，也是各种社会力相互之间发生、相应、抗衡、消耗的过程。所有能量和物质的活动都以平衡为目标，由高到低、由多至少、由生至死、由湿至干，以及由热至缺乏热。这是演化和全世界的定律，亦即熵的原理。所有能量和位能被消耗或正在消耗时，熵将随之增加。熵是一个均衡化的过程，宇宙藉由这个过程，从混沌和无序状态进入另一个状态。②
　　社会力的演化过程也与之大致类似，在各种作用力和应力的博弈过程中，形式结构随之而改变，克里斯托弗·威廉姆斯所言的"以最少材料达成最大强度的方法"原理，在社会层面中同样也发挥着作用。
　　刘水洋的作品正是敏锐地感受并把握到了我们今天所面临的时代性特征和困境，通过装置、雕塑、视频、行为等多种媒介，采取象征、隐喻以及观念置换的手法，将我们今天的社会性结构，各种关系和矛盾，个体的内心应力，以及弥漫在集体无意识层面中的普遍的迷茫、受伤、无助的社会情绪表达出来。与其他艺术家所不同的是，刘水洋在表现这些社会性问题的时候，着眼于从空间、结构，以及材料的社会性属性转换等角度分析和思考，从而在作品的形式结构问题的处理过程中，引出了"社会力"的核心问题。这是刘水洋的作品最具有独特性的地方。以下将从社会力呈现的不同方式入手，把刘水洋的作品做一个简单的分类：
　　⑴内在结构的社会性外化形式
　　这类作品包括《骨环》《弓》《梯》《骨》《弥赛亚》《头骨》等，它们有一个共同的特征，都是以人体内骨骼为基础，将之外化为一个特殊的结构形式。人体骨骼架构是在人类进化过程中，为了抵抗地球重力，并且也是为了完成各种复杂的运动，而发展出来的一种精密的力学结构形式。同时，人体骨骼虽然在人类的机械运动中无时不在发挥着基础性的作用，但是，因为它们被肌肉、皮肤等其它人体组织所包裹着，形成了生物学上典型的内骨骼特征。因为和死亡和伤害相关，在绝大多数人类文明的传统中，人体骨骼外化为可视形象是一种社会文明禁忌。刘水洋的作品将这种内骨骼外化为具有特殊意义内涵的力学形式结构，正是利用这种社会禁忌，将那些隐性的社会矛盾、群体性社会心理压力，以及个体的心理应力，通过这种触碰了社会禁忌之后"惊诧"的视觉心理体验强化出来。而新的外化结构，其本身也很好地阐释了社会力对于形式的象征和隐喻意义的重要作用。
　　⑵材料的社会学属性置换
　　这类作品有《螺纹钢》《美杜莎》《锥筒》《软体》等，它们都是和材料在自然属性基础上的社会学属性转换有关。材料在自然结构中，不管是起到结构性作用，还是介质性作用，无非是体现出它们的物理属性和化学属性。而在社会力的作用下，材料的置换成为了装置艺术的一种修辞手法。不管是螺纹钢筋置换为蜡的材质，还是混凝土置换为一种莫名的软体的材质，其背后都是带来了另一种新的材料和形式的社会学对应逻辑关系。新的材料特征和力学结构相结合之后所形成的荒诞、魔幻和超现实感，也正是社会力作用变形之下的社会结构的扭曲和乖张。
　　⑶特定社会环境背景下的自然应力形式
　　这类作品包括《意境》《2048kg》《纽约街道》，以及录像艺术作品《洗墙》等，它们是在特定条件下，自然应力所呈现出来的社会性特征。所以，从某种意义上来说，这种特殊的自然应力也是社会力的一种。比方说，一个4S店火灾之后，那些代表着最新科技力量强大的高档轿车在原始的自然力作用下，变得不堪一击，成为一堆堆丑陋的工业废铝，而从另一个角度来看，它所具有的"瘦、漏、皱、透"的视觉特征又似乎和中国传统审美意境有着某种荒诞的对应。混凝土是典型的人造材料，一块烂尾楼工程所遗留下来的混凝土块，经过简单的切割，在形式上又似乎和中国传统玉璧的形式有着某种相似。沥青路面经过汽车无数次的辗轧，最终路面呈现出一种具有抽象美的线条。墙面上"众声喧哗"的小广告被清洗掉之后，反而更突出了另一种印记的无可抗拒的唯一性和权威性。凡此种种，说明了单纯的机械力形式经过社会化转换之后，它背后可以折射出各种复杂的社会性隐喻关系。
　　⑷特定社会环境背景下的个人化应力形式
　　这类作品有《刺青》《救赎》《自塑像2017》《自塑像2018》《自塑像·双面》，以及行为艺术作品《一立方米》等，它们可以视为在特定的社会力场域中，个体面对这种社会力压力之下的应力反应，或一种普遍的集体无意识式的内在社会情绪。作品《救赎》截取了人类历史中一个典型的文化原型心理片段，以此来隐喻社会现实层面中大众的忧伤、迷茫和自我救赎。《刺青》就像是面对强大的外在社会力的一种个体的抗争，它通过将自己的指纹封印在一个强有力的结构之上的方式，试图来证明弱小个体存在的价值。《自塑像2017》通过在黑、白两个没有具体面部特征的"大众脸"，突出"反骨"在头部骨骼结构上的一种情绪性暗示，以此来表达个体在沉默的表象下的"弱势"抗力。行为艺术作品《一立方米》通过一个特定的封闭式结构，将人类现实的生存空间，以及生存空间高度货币化了的现实，进行了一种暗喻式的修辞转换。艺术家周而复始地擦拭着玻璃上自己呼出的水汽，这种永无止境的西西弗斯式的生存困境，极度反讽了人类今天所面临的社会现实和文明模式。
　　⑸社会化语境中的意义重生
　　《教具系列》在刘水洋的创作中是一个自成系统的作品系列，在本次展览中展出了这个系列中的部分作品。《教具系列》是将那些在长期的、已经形成制度性的艺术教育体系中被经典化的石膏教具，通过被其它材料包裹，改变了其细节特征之后，又经过重新翻模铸造成为了一个新的"雕塑"。在面对这样的"雕塑"的时候，但凡有一些所谓专业知识背景的人，都可以通过其动态和体积特征辨认出它的"原型"是哪一尊石膏教具；但是，细节特征的消失又带来了其"经典"性的模糊。从这里所引发的思考是，过度的技术性的利用，是否带来了一种匀质化之后的主体文化特征的消失？这是这个系列的作品在其"自成体系"的语境中的观念阐释。但是，当它们作为独立元素进入到本次展览的整体语境中之后，其意义又发生了新的变化，这就是在雕塑和装置之间最大的不同之处。一般而言，雕塑作品的意义是固定的、封闭的，它是通过其形体表皮之下的部分，诸如形式、体积、结构等因素表达作品的内涵。而装置则是打破形体表皮的束缚，将作品实体部分所放置的空间、场域、关系等因素引入到作品之中，从而形成新的语境逻辑。所以，刘水洋的《教具系列》作品从"自成系统"的解释体系转换为一个新的场域关系之后，它的意义也在作品的固有实体和其它作品所形成的意义场域的互动中，因为整体性的意义阐释结构的注入，其本身固有的意义逻辑也就产生了新的可能性。在前述的各个部分所构成的整体性语境中，教具系列也从它的经典性的丧失，转换为一个个失去了自我表达和个性特征的社会符号，进而成为了另一种更为普遍意义下的社会群体的象征。
　　综上所述，在刘水洋的作品中，通过对实体象征性的形式、结构在社会力学作用下的传达方式的研究和表达，宏观地呈现了今天我们所面临的社会现实以及社会普遍心理，以及在这种社会结构下，个体灵魂和个体情绪的存在方式。在其作品所流露出的悲悯、慰藉、救赎等情绪的背后，凸显的是对于个体的尊严和价值的关注。
　　2018年6月26日 旅次韩国仁川
　　（吴鸿：艺术批评家、策展人，宋庄当代艺术文献馆执行馆长，艺术国际主编，吉林艺术学院客座教授、研究生导师）
　　备注：
　　① 引自《形式起源》，克里斯托弗·威廉姆斯著，甘锡安译，城邦文化事业股份有限公司出版。P31
　　② 引自《形式起源》，克里斯托弗·威廉姆斯著，甘锡安译，城邦文化事业股份有限公司出版。P137 　　In The Origins of Form, Christopher Williams points out that the form of all things, whether natural or manmade, is the product of earth's gravity and various natural stresses, from the structure of the smallest cell, to the forms of the largest mountains and beaches, to the ways in which animals and plants grow. Williams noted that there were five forces of stress on structures: compression, tension, torsion, shear, and bending. "Structure is the way to achieve the most strength from the least material through the most appropriate arrangement of elements within the best form for the intended use, and constructed from the material most suited to the kind of stress placed upon it."
　　In addition to these natural forces, humans are social animals, and our ways of organizing groups in society, modes of knowledge accumulation in society, and ways of expressing emotion in society all subtly influence the ways that humans understand the spatial structures of the world around them, which further shapes humanity's formal depictions of things in the world. The influences that society has on formal structures we will call "social forces."
　　Specifically, the formation and function of social forces can be divided into three layers:
　　The first is society's collective will. This is primarily manifested in social systems, mainstream ideologies, and society's organizational forms, customs, and culture, as well as dominant modes of expressing emotion in society. It is largely conveyed through political power, organs of the state, mainstream cultural traditions and customs, and social organizations, which transform this collective will into an external force.
　　The second is individual will. An important difference between man and animal is that man can, through individual learning processes, grasp knowledge and experience previously accumulated by the group. This learning process can be conveyed through language, technical experience, specific training institutions, and books. As humans grow, they experience a long process of individual learning and knowledge accumulation. Some animal species, especially primates, have a process similar to learning, but in contrast to these simple survival skills, the human learning process gradually builds knowledge structures and value judgments, which further influence and change the form of society. This process of individual knowledge accumulation fully reflects the traits of society. Thus, even if it is an embodiment of individual will, it still reflects the essential properties of the society in which it occurs.
　　The third is the collective unconscious. Carl Jung believed that the collective unconscious was a universal human spirit buried deep in the mind and formed through the inheritance of countless similar experiences. This hereditary accumulation of similar experiences may be one of the animal traits that was retained in the course of human evolution. In animals, the majority of instincts and experiences are conveyed between individuals through heredity. Some typical species of social animal, such as ants and bees, have very low levels of individuation, and the division of labor and coordination within the group is performed through the secretion of pheromones. Individuals are only able to send and receive information from each other's pheromone signals. On a higher level, society's "wisdom" only exists in the group's "super-brain." Humanity's collective unconscious is different, and although it is conveyed and augmented through biological heredity, the collective unconscious obviously has distinct societal traits. First, humanity's collective unconscious includes instincts and archetypes, and the production of archetypes is related to a group's early social history. For example, humanity's early experiences of living in caves determined the form and function of the homes designed by their descendants. Second, the collective unconscious can be activated in certain situations to become consciousness.
　　Thus, how social forces shape form can be divided into the three layers of collective will, individual will, and the collective unconscious.
　　The characteristics of our society today are linked to the real estate economy, bringing together state will, power relationships, capital, individual will, and the collective unconscious in a game of chess, with its entanglements, conflicts, resistance, and re-balancing. Here, various social forces are occurring, responding to and competing with one another, and being depleted. "All energies and substances move to the compromise, high to the low, numerous to the sparse, live to the dead, moist to the dry, and heat to the lack of heat. This is the law of evolution and the world, the principle of entropy. When all energies and potential energies are spent, entropy is increased… Entropy is the equalizing process by which the universe is moving through a state of chaos and disorder to an end…"
　　The evolution of social forces is generally very similar to this. In the contention between various applied forces and stresses, formal structures change. Williams' "way to achieve the most strength from the least material" works in a similar way on the social plane.
　　Liu Shuiyang keenly perceives and grasps the predicaments and traits of the times in which we find ourselves. Through a range of media, including installation, sculpture, video, and performance, he uses symbols, metaphors, and conceptual displacements to express our current social structures, relationships and conflicts, personal mental stresses, and the universal societal emotions of confusion, pain, and helplessness that permeate the collective unconscious. In contrast to other artists, when Liu Shuiyang presents these societal issues, he focuses on the analysis and consideration of the transformation of the social properties of spaces, structures, and materials. Therefore, in treating issues of formal structure in his works, he raises key questions about social forces, and this is what makes his work special. Liu's works can be simply divided based on the different ways that these social forces are presented:
　　(1) The Socialized External Forms of Interior Structures
　　Bone Ring, Bow, Ladder, Bone, Messiah, and Skull have one thing in common: they are based on human bones, externalizing bones as special structural forms. In human evolution, the skeleton is a precise mechanical structure developed to resist the earth's gravity and to complete complex motions. Human bones are foundational and omnipresent in human mechanical movement, but they are covered by muscle, skin, and other bodily tissues, forming what biologists would consider a typical endoskeleton. Because it is related to death and injury, the externalization of human bones is seen as a social and cultural taboo in the traditions of the vast majority of human civilizations. Liu Shuiyang's work takes the externalization of these interior bones as a mechanical structure with a special meaning; he uses this social taboo, intensifying those hidden social conflicts, group psychological pressures, and individual psychological stresses through the "surprising" visual and psychological experience of this contact with social taboos. The new, externalized structures actually explain the important role that social forces play in the meaning of formal symbols and metaphors.
　　(2) The Displacement of the Social Properties of Materials
　　Rebar, Medusa, Cone, and Soft Body are related to the sociological transformation of a material's properties based on its natural attributes. The natural structures of materials, whether they play a structural or material role, simply reflect their physical and chemical properties. Affected by social forces, the displacement of materials becomes a rhetorical method in installation art. Whether rebar is displaced by wax, or concrete is displaced by an unknown, soft material, these displacements give rise to another logical relationship that has a sociological correspondence to these new materials and forms. The absurdity, magic, and surreality produced after these new material characteristics and mechanical structures are combined is a distortion and perversion of social structures transformed by social forces.
　　(3) The Forms of Natural Stresses in Specific Social Contexts
　　Under specific conditions, Mood, 2,048 kg, New York Street, and the video work Washing Walls have social traits that emerge from natural stresses. In a sense, these particular natural stresses are a kind of social force. For example, after a fire at a car repair shop, high-end sedans representing the immense power of the latest technologies collapse immediately when faced with primal natural forces, becoming a pile of ugly industrial waste. From another perspective, its "thin, porous, wrinkled, and permeable" visual characteristics seem to correspond to an absurdity within Chinese traditional aesthetics. Concrete is a classic manmade material. After Liu simply cuts a piece of concrete left behind by an unfinished building project, it bears a formal similarity to a traditional Chinese jade disc. An asphalt road that has been traversed by countless cars will eventually be marked with lines with an abstract beauty. After the noisy little advertisements on the wall are washed off, it actually highlights the irresistible uniqueness and authority of other marks. Numerous similar cases show that mechanical forms, after their social transformation, can reflect various complex metaphorical relationships in society.
　　(4) The Forms of Individual Stresses in Specific Social Contexts
　　In specific sites of social force, Tattoo, Redemption, Self-Portrait 2017, Self-Portrait 2018, Self-Portrait: Two Faces, and the performance art piece One Cubic Meter can be seen as reactions to stress or the universal social emotions within the collective unconscious that arise when an individual confronts pressure from social forces. Redemption extracts a psychological fragment of a typical cultural archetype from human history, which serves as a metaphor for the anxiety, confusion, and self-redemption within social reality. Tattoo is an individual's resistance in the face of immense external social forces; by putting his fingerprints onto a formidable structure, he attempts to prove the value of a single individual's existence. Through two generalized faces in black and white that don't have specific facial features, Self-Portrait 2017 highlights the emotional suggestions of the occipital bone in a skull's structure, in order to express an individual's "weak" resistance to silent surfaces. Through a specific closed structure, the performance art piece One Cubic Meter makes a metaphorical, rhetorical transformation of the real spaces in which humans live and the reality of the intense monetization of lived spaces. The artist repeatedly wipes the water vapor from his breath off the glass. This endless Sisyphean predicament satirizes the reality of society and the model of civilization that we face today.
　　(5) The Rebirth of Meaning in a Social Context
　　In Liu's body of work, Teaching Materials is an autonomous system. A selection of these works will be presented in the exhibition. Teaching Materials involves classic plaster models that have long been institutionalized in the art education system. By wrapping them in other materials, their details and features are changed, and new sculptures are recast from these molds. With this kind of sculpture, as long as there are a few people with a professional background, the plaster model "archetype" is discernible based on movements and volumes. However, the loss of detailed features blurs its classic-ness. This leads us to wonder whether over-processing or homogenization can cause key cultural traits to disappear. This series is a conceptual interpretation of the context of the "autonomous system." However, after these works, as individual elements, enter into the overall context of the exhibition, their meanings change once again, which may be the biggest difference between sculpture and installation. Generally speaking, the meaning of works of sculpture is fixed and closed, presented through the parts under the surface-elements such as form, volume, and structure. Installation art breaks with formal surface restrictions, bringing the spaces, sites, and relationships of the material artwork's placement into the work itself, thereby creating a new contextual logic. After shifting from an "autonomous" interpretive system toward new situational relationships, the meaning of Liu Shuiyang's Teaching Materials lies in the innate substance of these works and the interactions with other works in sites of meaning. Because of the injection of their overall interpretive structures, its intrinsic logic produced new possibilities. In the overall context that the aforementioned parts constituted, the Teaching Materials series loses its classic qualities and becomes a social symbol devoid of self-expression and individual characteristics, thereby becoming another symbol of a social group in a more universal sense.
　　Through his research and presentation of ways of conveying the forms and structures of material symbolism affected by social mechanics, Liu Shuiyang's work takes a macroscopic view of the social realities and universal social mentalities that we encounter, and the ways that the souls and emotions of individuals exist within this social structure. The emotions of pity, consolation, and redemption that flow from the works magnify an interest in individual dignity and values.
　　June 26, 2018
　　Incheon, South Korea
　　(Wu Hong: Art critic, curator, managing director of the Songzhuang Contemporary Art Archive, editor-in-chief of Artintern.net, and a guest professor and graduate advisor at Jilin College of the Arts)
　　References
　　Williams, Christopher. The Origins of Form. Plymouth, UK: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1981.